Last Train Home

Last Train Home, a new collection of haiku, tanka, and rengay celebrating train travel!

I’m excited to be among the authors represented in this fine collection of poems and poets. My two poems in the book are the following:

railroad crossing

this time

I’ve been given

Agnes Eva Savich

I wrote that poem while waiting for a very long passing train at a crossing in rural Wisconsin, while visiting my parents. Instead of being annoyed at the endless boxcars going by slowly, I relaxed and let my mind wander and daydream. The microcosm of unexpected free time I had no control over became time in the larger sense; the gift of life and the time we have on Earth.

a train fades

the sound of women

talking in rain

Agnes Eva Savich

This was written at a ranch retreat in Texas Hill Country, where I was on a long weekend away with women friends I had known for over a decade via an online forum. We came from all over the country to have a glorious meet-up in person, many of us meeting for the first time. A huge covered porch looking over a creek and forest kept us dry and a freight train somewhere near would pass by several times a day with a loud but soothing sound.

My relationship with trains goes back to the summer of 1998, when I embarked on 3 months of travel following my Junior year abroad in France.

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  European train

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  Bocca della Verità; Rome, Italy

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  Morocco

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  Student budget train lunch: Evian, canned beans, fresh carrots

This Inter-Rail pass got me through the countries of France, Spain, Morocco, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Poland, The Netherlands, and England.

I’ve also held some colorful internal train passes through my travels, such as my Carte Orange, which required a monthly pass purchase for unlimited Paris Metro rides, a one week pass for London’s tube system, and a TGV pass for a Paris-Lyon trip:

My favorite train image comes from the inside of Lyon Metro electric driverless train, pretty high tech for the late 90s:

MPL – Metro Pneus Lyon

I hope you’ve enjoyed my little review of my time with trains, and hope you’ll consider purchasing this book for some armchair train travel:

Last Train Home is available on Amazon in various countries. You can also drop into the Last Train Home -haiku Facebook page for more poems, photos, and stories related to the book and train travel in general.

Other stops on the virtual train tour:

Sharing a train window on Wild Ink, from editor Jacquie Pearce

kcdyer, Vancouver-based author of the literary travel adventure, Eighty Days to Elsewhere

Poet Julie Thorndyke from New South Wales, Australia

Haiku Railroad Blues video with US haiku poet Alan Pizzarelli

Crafty Green Poet, Juliet Wilson, writing from Edinburgh, Scotland

a past train post by UK poet Alan Summers and a new post about the train anthology.